Open Up Your Mind
by Mystic25
Summary: The year 2021 marks 20 years since the Attack on America, its a different colder world, but some things must always be remembered


TITLE: "Open Up Your Mind"  
AUHTOR: Mystic25  
EMAIL: yellowrubberduck31@hotmail.com  
  
SUMMARY: The year 2021 marks 20 years since the Attack on America, its a different colder world, but some things must always be remembered  
  
Disclaimer: You know it  
  
A/N: This was inspired by another fic here at fanfic.net, it was beautifully written to tie this tragedy into a fictional world. The title is taken from Blessed Union of Souls song "I Believe" who recently re-did the song as a tribute to what happened that day. If you haven't heard it, I encourage you to.  
  
DEDICATION: To the victims of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, all three United Airlines flights, and to the people who loved them.  
  
*****  
  
"My children are only eight and ten years old, they think mommy's still at work (man cries)  
If anybody see's her tell'em to please call us, please look at the picture and call us, thank you"  
  
(Blessed Union of Souls starts:)  
  
Walk Blindly to the Light and reach out for His hand,  
Don't ask any questions and don't try to understand,  
Open up your mind and then open up your heart.  
And you will see that you and me aren't very far apart..."  
  
*****  
  
NEW YORK CITY, NY  
SEPTEMBER 11, 2021  
GROUND ZERO  
  
(MAX POV)  
  
Nothing remains of these huge towers, gigantic structures of American power, at least I'm told. I never saw them. But I'm told they were massive, housing thousands of people inside during a single day. Thousands of people. I look at the ground, absent of a foundation, now only covered with flowers and cards and pictures countless pictures. Damn thousands of lives gone in one day. All that I have seen, all that has been taken away, and done to me, it don't count now. Not here, not standing at this site.  
  
The ticket stub is still in my pocket. The piece of paper that got me here with Logan, along with about fifteen sector and state passes. He asked me to come. Said he did this yearly since that day. This would be my first time. I only know about this attack through the images Logan tapped, and through a few people who were alive the day it happened. But they all said the same thing, said it was insurmountably different to see it for real, to touch it, walk where it happened.  
  
Their right. TV don't do this justice. I'm standing in what happened, it was here right below my feet. There's an American flag tucked in my arm, one that I have bought to lay here. I folded it in the honorable triangular way, the way of the funerals of soldiers, because that's what I am after all. The flag is deposited on the wet ground, I lay a red rose on top of it, and it seems to vanish among the hundreds of others.  
  
In the distance someone cries, I look up to see the face of mourning. Taking shape in the form of a young couple. A woman holding a candle next to a young man. They are not lovers, they don't hold each other in that way. Family, brother and sister, holding a candle with an image of a woman, their mother. How old were they when she was killed? Six, seven? How many times have they cried before this?  
  
Cry me a river? No these people have cried enough to fill oceans. It's a terrible thing, I know, to feel that sadness from death. I have had it countless times. Something that hurts right at the top of your heart, like it's being squeezed, but nothing makes it go away. Even after all the sympathy and cards and flowers of traditional get well fanfare it hurts, it makes your heart bleed, makes it cry.  
  
It was a war zone here, I'm a soldier I can tell, the total lack of any standing evidence except rocky dirt where something stood, hundreds of memorials to honor people who died en mass, who had no last rights, the shell shock feel of the air, the lack of all other noise except crying and mumbled whispers of things never told, the unmistakable smell of death, and those left in the aftermath.   
  
Manticore, tucked away in it's Gillette woods was probably glad for the turn of attention. We never knew, the outside was kept outside, death was all death to us, whether it be X5's, Anomalies or thousands of innocents.  
  
I never knew, I do now. My heart, my supposedly iron clad, emotionless, stone heart hurts now. I don't know any of them, or any of those who are crying because they are gone. But it hurts just the same. I can see it,  
see all of what must've been hell on earth. Its all here, here at this place called "Ground Zero" that was the Trade Centers until that day.  
  
The lone tear travels down my face, I wasn't suppose to feel. But Decks a son of a bitch, he lied. I have to feel now. For once in my life I don't want to not 'go with the crowd' People died here, I will NOT insult them by not feeling something, anger, sadness, revenge at the site of where so many have come to share a single grave. It is a code of honor in this soldier's standards. I cannot bring them back, can't take back that day, make it all a piss scary dream, like the Pulse, like two of my sisters death, like my own. It was real, and so were they.  
  
Twenty years should do nothing to erase the remembrance of a day I actually never saw. There were people that did, and I'll french Renfro and Deck at the same time before I blow off this day cause it didn't happen to me.  
  
The air is tense, solemn, no joking, no hooting, no traditional street talk in New York. People come to remember a sad day for this now Pulse ridden nation. That first anniversary, the names were read, thousands of them one by one. It's become a tradition, they're read every year now, followed by moments of silence.  
  
But here they're are no moments of silence, there's just silence. A man comes through, dressed in tatters, half starved, poor like the homeless that lines the streets of Seattle. He too lays a handful of daisies, all he could find, at this place. He is poor, lost, sick, his eyes look like they've seen hell, but still he cries, laying the small handful of roadside weeds on the earth with weathered hands.  
  
Logan is behind me now. He has come back from looking, gazing at all the flowers and candles, taking all of it in.  
  
His eyes are on mine now "Never gets any easier" those crystal blue eyes have a wisdom in them, remembering when this was all horribly fresh.  
  
I look around me again "How many?" I find his eyes again  
  
"Two thousand, eight hundred and one" his says this with a hard voice, but laced with sadness. I can see the events of that day all unfold again in those words, in that look.  
  
His coat collar blows in the cold autumn wind, black wool to match my black leather. A color of respect for standing at a grave site. A small pin of the American flag is the only color to his outside, that and his ice blue eyes.  
  
"Thanks" I pause "For bringin' me here. I needed to see this"  
  
He doesn't say anything to this. I don't expect him to. One hand is at my face, wiping away the tear track still visible there.  
  
"How old were you?" I change the need for comfort onto him  
  
"Twelve" a simple answer that held so much meaning "We were here, about three miles away. It was so dark it was like misty twilight. People were coming out covered in dust and debree the air was choking, and full of soot. No one knew what to do, everyone was screaming or crying."  
  
I listen, and let it all sink in, this site, the crying, the people, the flowers, flags, his story. I burn it in my memory, I don't want to ever forget this. I can't, Manticore gene splicing better not screw me over. I CAN'T forget today. I stay longer, people ask me things, tell me stories of friends and lovers, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives. I look at the image of a young man being shown to the daughter he'll never know. I wipe the tears of a little boy who told me that mommy always cries cause she misses grandpa.   
  
I stand there just watching, soaking all of it in. As the sun goes down, I still stand there. Most of them have gone home, the candles still remain, shining in the dark sky, bits of heaven in what was a hell twenty years ago.  
  
Logan actually gives me his coat, draping it over my body. My leather jacket gone from giving it to a woman who came out in such a hurry to light a candle for her husband she forgot a coat, but who promised me she would return it.  
  
I pull the coat around me closer, "You'll regret that"  
  
"Don't think so" he responds in a way that reminds me he was raised as a nice guy. "I haven't regretted a thing about coming here today."  
  
My breath is visible above me, Logan's hand is touching mine, with the hundreds of stars in the sky, and the memories of the fallen below.  
  
******  
  
R/R please 


End file.
